


the bliss of afterwards

by hunted



Series: a man like me [2]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Abusive Parents, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Body Dysphoria, Body Hair, Chest Binding, Dysphoria, Epilogue, Established Relationship, Happy Ending, Injury, M/M, Memories, Minor Injuries, Not Beta Read, Nudity, Phalloplasty, Reminiscing, Romance, Self-Acceptance, Trans Character, Trans Hank Anderson, Trans Male Character, Trauma, and he is projecting onto hank, the author is a trans man who is tired and sad, unsafe binding, yeehaw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-25 23:09:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20920169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hunted/pseuds/hunted
Summary: He turned back to his reflection. That ghostly boy.With shaking hands, fingers made clumsy by intoxication, he started undoing his flannel shirt. The young man in the mirror did the same.





	the bliss of afterwards

**Author's Note:**

> This fic contains dangerous binding practices as a form of self-harm because, uh, it's something that I did recently. I'm very depressed at present, and shouldn't be considered an example. Binding with bandages can be [very dangerous](https://transmalepride.wixsite.com/jakesspace/post/chest-binding-basics). If you think you might be encouraged to bind unsafely if you read this fic, please do not read on. Everything is tagged.
> 
> I honestly have no idea what this is. Please take my sad trans man word vomit and enjoy it.

He was on a bus. He knew this because he’d fallen asleep with his head against the window, and the vehicle’s chugging engine set cataclysmic vibrations pounding through his brain. It felt like his skull was chipped, cracking and splintering from the force of the sounds around him, his hangover mixing with potent depression and producing a thoroughly toxic cloud of _oh fuck this is very bad_.

Hank rose from the stained bus seat like a zombie, head rolling on his shoulders, neck rubbery and loose. The only thing that cut through his listlessness was the pain that whiplashed through him, sharp sensations of pressure and bruising. He inhaled, swaying as he walked, almost collapsing when his ribs emitted a silent scream. His body was broken. He was broken.

Someone said something to him, their tone of voice disapproving. He waved them away, deafened by the ringing in his ears, a high-pitched drumbeat of hysteria. His path off the bus was hastened by someone shoving him out into the cold, his boots catching on the steps and sending him sprawling onto the icy ground.

He lay there for a moment, half his face smushed up against ice, cheek cut by the impact, numbed and weeping blood. He stumbled to his feet, palms grazed, ribs aching.

_Wanna be a man, take it like a man. Who the fuck do you think you are?_

He laughed, breath clouding in the frigid air, skin pulled tight over his face like cooled wax. He felt like a fucking god, like an insect, like a tiny insignificant speck of dirt on a spinning rock in the corner of an endless universe. He raised his arms into the air, face turned toward whatever higher power had fucked him so royally.

“Nobody,” he murmured, words coming out slurred, tongue thick in his mouth, “Think ‘m fuckin’ nobody.”

There was no answer. He gazed unseeingly up into the night sky, smog-thick clouds overhead. A few people walked past him, giggling at his obviously intoxicated state.

He put his hands back in his pockets and wandered home.

***

His door took a beating, scratches dented into his doorknob as he fumbled and cursed trying to let himself inside, exhausted and bleary-eyed. He just wanted tonight to be over. He was beyond the optimism of believing tomorrow would be better, but at least it wouldn’t be tonight. Everything swirled and moved, the pace of it all dizzying, and eventually he was in his bedroom. When he looked down at his hand, he was holding a cool beer that he didn’t remember getting out of the fridge. Things seemed steadier, but there was time to remedy that.

He opened the beer, threw the cap at the wall. It bounced away with a metallic _clack, _far less satisfying than he’d been anticipating.

“Sobriety is a journey, not a destination,” he announced sarcastically, parroting the words of his social worker and raising his beer in a toast. He knew that being an apathetic fuckface was better than actually admitting what was wrong, so yeah, he pretended. He pretended, he lied, he faked it, and he sneered at any sincerity.

The beer tasted good. Smooth, heavenly, sliding down his throat and nestling hot inside his body. _Fuck yeah, _he’d never stop drinking. This was good. This was all he had.

He was being watched. Being stared at by a skinny, shabby-looking motherfucker, tucked into an overlarge flannel and dusty blue jeans. Hair shaved close to the scalp, big blue eyes that betrayed the fragility of youth, cheeks too round to evade suspicion. _Something wrong with that kid. Something not right. _His cheek was bleeding, one eye puffy with injury, a split on his lip from the sting of his mother’s palm.

“’Ey,” Hank slurred, gesturing toward his battered reflection, “The fuck you lookin’ at?”

No reply was forthcoming. He watched his lips move in the glass, and echo of sound he was sure he could hear, a whispered presence magnified by the booze. He swum in it, in the strange reality he’d begun to inhabit, then he placed the beer down on his bedside table with deliberate care. Wouldn’t do to accidentally smash his drink now, would it. His whole house was a fucking bombsite, but beer, that golden bubbling syrup, _that _needed to be protected. _You fucking alco, look what you’ve become, you’re no son of mine-_

He turned back to his reflection. That ghostly boy.

With shaking hands, fingers made clumsy by intoxication, he started undoing his flannel shirt. The young man in the mirror did the same.

With every inch of skin that was revealed, the grip of nausea on his stomach grew more unbearable, the weight of responsibility making him sick. He knew he’d fucked himself up good and proper, this time. He’d taken it too far. Worst part was that there was no fucking alternative.

The flannel shirt fell to the ground behind his feet, anticlimactic and sad. He was left standing there, bowed over from the eternal ache, numbed as it was by the beer.

A skeletal thing, too pale, undernourished and sad. The bruises were worst where nobody could see them, a heart pierced clean through by agony, the magnitude of which nobody could understand. Stained bandages were wrapped tightly around his body, flat as he'd been able to force it. Too tight. He couldn’t breathe. He could see it every time he went to take a breath, could see his ribs moving like piano keys underneath his skin, the edge of fabric cutting into him like a curse.

It hurt.

It hurt so fucking badly.

He knew the next part would hurt far worse.

***

Many years later, Hank lay in bed with his husband.

Connor was curled into his side, breathing quietly in his sleep. Hank gazed up at the ceiling, remembering. He was haunted. That would never really go away, but the pain was a companion now. A ghost that accompanied him, reminding him not to take any of this for granted.

Hank reached up with his free hand, the roughened pads of two fingertips finding the hollow of his throat. He closed his eyes. Next, his hand wandered down the contours of his body, toying with greyed curls of chest hair. He tapped against his sternum, meditating on the strangeness of it all, the knowledge that– a very long time ago– that same skin had been swollen and agonising, bandages rubbing him raw and twisting him tight.

There was no pain now.

His touch continued to explore, as if this were a new body, as if he were finding himself for the first time. The lengths of scar tissue on his chest, barely even noticeable now. The nubs of his nipples, sensitive after years of healing. The meat of his body, softness at his sides, ribs well protected by the portly indulgence of a man past his middle age. He stroked the dip of his bellybutton, where the hair began to thicken even more. Downward still, up onto the rise of his pelvic bone, the base of his cock. He shifted his thighs, hand curling around his length, a smile quirking the corners of his mouth. His grin grew and grew, happiness impossible to contain, blooming inside him like the warmth of summertime.

"Hank?"

Connor's voice was thick with sleep, breathy and tired. Hank turned his head, humming out a quiet, "Shh," and pressing a kiss to Connor's forehead.

"Are you okay?"

Hank felt tears rising to his eyes, wet against his lashes. He couldn't stop smiling.

"Yeah. I'm okay."


End file.
